From Statehouse hall to halls of Congress

There is at least one prominent Massachusetts politician who ought to be paying his respects to the late Tommy McGee, 88, of Lynn, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House, who died last Friday.

And that political figure is veteran U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, 66, of Malden, the dean of the Massachusetts U.S. House delegation to Congress.

In many ways, there would not be a Congressman Eddie Markey if there had not been a Tommy McGee, the tough talking, former World War II combat veteran, who served as speaker of the House for almost 10 years, from 1975 to 1984.

That was during the days when the Massachusetts House of Representatives was an unwieldy body of 240 members -- and not the 160 it is today -- and the speaker needed all the leaderships skills he could muster to keep control in order to get things done.

McGee may not have been media friendly, or looked the part of an accomplished legislator, or talk like one, given that he was a curt, tough-talking working-class kid from Lynn. But he surprised a lot of people by the way he ran the House, and he passed a lot of important social legislation that helped the less fortunate. You could question his style, but you could not quibble with his results.

With McGee there were no surprises. What you saw is what you got. There was nothing that fazed McGee, not after having survived weeks of savage combat against the Japanese at bloody Iwo Jima as a young U.S. Marine in 1945. It was a battle immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's epic photo of the flag raising atop Mount Suribachi. McGee had seen it all.

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So nothing surprised him, and he could work with governors as different as Michael Dukakis and Ed King. He also could run the house with firmness, dishing out perks, like committee assignments, and precious office space and staff to Democrats.

One of those Democrats was Eddie Markey, a relatively new member of the House, a young, smooth and ambitious liberal out to make a name for himself. The best way to do that was to stand up to the gruff, conservative McGee, who had just been elected speaker in 1975.

In the middle of his second term in 1975, Markey opposed McGee on a bill dealing with the abolition of part-time district court judges in Massachusetts. As a result, so the story goes, an angry McGee threw Markey, a lawyer, off the Judiciary Committee, and had him and his desk moved out of the committee offices into the hallway.

It was no big deal and nobody paid much attention to the event. The speaker controlled coveted office space, and that was that. Some said that McGee, who had 240 reps to deal with, did not even know who Markey was, but that Markey was booted out by an aide to the speaker.

Then longtime U.S. Congressman Torbert H. Macdonald of Malden, a World War II hero and Harvard roommate of President John F. Kennedy, died in May 1976 and his 7th Congressional District seat (now the 5th) became open.

A special election was called to fill the vacancy and Markey, 29, a long-shot candidate who had never even been to Washington, was one of the first to jump into the crowded Democratic primary, which attracted a dozen candidates.

While all the others struggled to find a campaign theme, Markey came up with the best campaign theme of them all. He decided to run against Speaker McGee.

Markey and his campaign advisers created a television ad that dramatized Markey's being thrown out of his office. The ad showed Markey standing in front of desk placed in a dark and empty corridor in the dingy basement of the Statehouse.

With his arms folded, a stern and determined Markey looked into the television camera and uttered the most memorable words he has ever spoken. He said: "They may tell me where to sit, but nobody tells me where to stand." It was boffo.

Markey won the crowded 1976 Democratic primary, albeit with a paltry 22 percent of the vote, and he has never looked back. He has been re-elected every two years since then, which is a lot of elections and a lot of years. And despite all the speeches he has made, he has yet to top that quote.

When McGee's friends joked with him about helping Markey get elected, the puckish McGee shrugged, chuckled and said: "Hey, good luck to the kid."

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